Leadership lessons from the Federal election

There are so many leadership lessons which can be learnt from the recent Federal Election. Indeed I think many of Labor's problems can be put down to a failure of leadership. It all began when Kevin Rudd and the Labor Government turned their backs on their own Climate Change Agenda. Leadership is often about presenting tough choices to people but when it looked tough Kevin Rudd retreated.

Interestingly, the conservative side of politics has become better (but from a low base) at sticking to some of their principles and occasionally presenting tough choices. However, Tony Abbott's active encouragement of fear and hysteria about refugees is not an example of this courage!

I think two groups deserted Kevin Rudd over his Climate Change backdown. A large group of people voted Green because they support action on Climate Change. Another group of working people in Queensland and New South Wales who were perhaps not as committed to action on Climate Change but prepared to support Rudd's leadership on the matter, deserted him. In their case I think their main beef was his lack of integrity and leadership!

When Julia Gillard took over the PM's role we again saw failures of leadership, some of them around lack of judgement and ego. Was it pride and ego, or just poor judgement by Julia, not to offer the vanquished Kevin Rudd an immediate senior ministerial role? And if as most people believe Kevin Rudd and his staff are responsible for the extremely damaging leaking against Julia Gillard during the campaign, what does it say about his inability to set aside ego for larger leadership goals?